Bikini Bottom Nights: The Book of Spongebob
by Zenvora
Summary: It is nighttime in Bikini Bottom, the time when all the thugs and gamblers and lowlives come out to raze the city for blood and money. The weak become prey to the strong, and the laughter of the powerful few lays waste to those unfortunate enough to stand in their way. In this installment, SpongeBob faces relentless odds as he attempts to uncover the mystery behind a dead woman.
1. Chapter One

It's one in the morning and I'm still lying on my bed, awake. A few beams of moonlight from the outside shine through the shutters and streak across my tired face. The water shimmers from the heat, and every once in a while I hear a boat zoom down the street through the puddles of rain. On the night stand there's a pack of smokes, unopened. That won't last long, though. Damn this heat. Keeping me up this late after such a long, shitty day. The insomnia's back, and this time not even the milk helps. I can't drink away guilt. It just lingers there, stinking up my brain, like a Krabby patty left out in the sun. My eyes close for a while, and then they shoot open again, and that happens nearly ten times before I realize it ain't worth it and sit right back up again. Damn this heat.

Except it isn't the heat that keeps me awake. No, that's just what I keep trying to tell myself while I lay on this lousy mattress because I keep trying to avoid thinking about that incident. Why does it bother me so much? It wasn't the blood; no, that wasn't it. No, it was the fact that I could have saved that girl. But I didn't. I take another swig of the milk carton that sits on the floor, and after five more minutes I'm still not asleep. Neptune damnit, it ain't worth it.

My untied shoes sit at the foot of the bed, and with what seems like the last of my strength I sit up and tie them around my swollen achy feet. Grabbing the sealed pack of seags I tuck them into my pocket along with a lighter. I chuckle because I know that pack will be empty and at the bottom of a trash can by the end of the night. Neptune, I can't believe I'm still thinking about her. I'm a pathetic little sponge, just standing there enjoying a smoke while Krabs shot that gal down. She was a good one too, a real catch. She woulda made some joe real happy someday. Instead, she got killed because a lousy old crustacean can't forgive a debt. Maybe a walk will clear my mind. Who am I likely to find at this hour, I wonder? Probably just drunks, whores, and drunken whores, like usual. The wind is blowing, and a mild rain splatters against the window, so I grab my coat before I leave. Lighting up a smoke, I touch the cold metal of the door and swing it open. It's the kind of rain that sparkles beneath the midnight light, the kind that's weightless and falls so slowly as to catch your eye on every single drop. It's beautiful. Oh, and one more thing to grab before I leave: the pills, just in case. I've been trying to quit the pills, honest, but I just keep grabbing them every time I go out. It's a habit. _Not_ an addiction. A habit, nothing more.

I step outside and unfold my collar to keep the rain off of my seagarette. It's hot as Davy Jones out here, but my coat makes me feel… safer, somehow. The seag rests between my two front teeth; it's already expired in this humid heat. I pull it out of my mouth and drop it on the ground.

 **Thud.**

 _The smoke rises to the ceiling. I'm standing in a freezer locker, watching a young woman get the tartar beaten out of her by one of Krabs' goons. His name's Reg. I remember that name. He wears a green headband and he's got one of the goddamn ugliest tattoos I've ever seen in my life. It's a red heart with the word "MOM" inside it, and it's plastered right over his hairy chest. Reg. Here he is, beating up a gal strapped to a chair, defenseless. I watch in disgust, but I don't do nothing. She's Krabs' business, probably owes him something, what the hell do I care? I just want to get out of this freezer before shit gets real. I can't stand the sight of blood, and right now, there's a whole lot of it coming out of her._

 _An old crab sits in the corner, laughing in the dark. Krabs. My boss. By day, he runs a successful food business, the one we're standing in right now. But by night, he runs this town, no questions asked. People call him "The King Crab", and he lives up to that name too. Ex-Navy, came to BB penniless, ended up living a life of crime in the alleys. He earned the trust of a few key bosses, and then quickly disposed of said trust by cutting their goddamn gullets open while they slept. He's a bad dude, I'll tell you that. The way he grins at her with those squinty eyes, watching the dame get pounded like a slab of meat, I just know something's gonna happen soon. But I don't say nothing. I never say nothing._

 _"So, ya think you can cheat me, eh lass?" he says with a smile. He puffs on a Cuban seagar, walks right up to her and blows the smoke into her swollen face. She coughs. So do I. That's when I realize I lit another seag and started smoking it without even realizing it. "Think again. I know exactly what ye did, and ya aren't gettin' away with it, ya've got me word."_

 _"Go to hell, you dusty old fuck," she says, and she spits blood into his wrinkled face. Ouch. Shouldn't have done that. He replies with a swift backhand to her pretty little face that sends a streak of blood splattering against some boxes of frozen patties. Those claws of his can really do some damage. When I started working for the old hoot, I was downright terrified of the guy. Not like I had a choice but to fall in with the crowd; I just wanted a fry cook job and ended up getting a hell of a lot more than I bargained for. But once you're in, you're in for good. Better to be friends with the stingy old Jew than to be his enemy. I've seen what he does to his enemies. This dame right here? She's his enemy. And I'd rather not be sitting where she's sitting. The smoke expires. I drop it to the ground like the last one. The freezer will do the rest. Reg delivers another blow, this time to the ribs._

 **Crunch.**

I look down and see that I stepped on a tin can. The rain's coming down harder now. Better find a place to take shelter, preferably a bar. But first, I've gotta wipe these damn thoughts about that stupid girl out of my head. She probably got what she deserved. She probably screwed old man Krabs over real bad. So why do I still feel so guilty that I let him do what he did to her?

Because she was a knockout, that's why. You're letting your male instincts get the better of you, Spongebob, don't try to fool yourself. What happened in that freezer a week ago, it would have happened whether you tried to intervene or not. What, you think that you could have taken on Reg and Krabs with nothing but your bare cuffs? Get a grip. She didn't have a chance, and you know it.

It's pouring now. Maybe taking this little walk was a bad idea after all. How the hell am I supposed to get any sleep all soaking wet? The neon lights flood the streets of Bikini Bottom with luminescence, and yet everything still seems dark. Empty. A whore flashes her tits at me from across the street, saying something about how much she wants me inside her. I don't listen. They're a dime a dozen anyway. What I really want is a real dame, a dame like-

No, Neptune damnit. Stop. You're not going to think about that girl anymore. I squint my eyes and they make out a few colorful blurs that spell out "Salty Spitoon". Well, I wished upon a star for a bar, and this is what Neptune delivered. Maybe by the time I'm out of there, I'll be drunk off of my ass enough to walk home and finally get some sleep. Maybe the rain will have stopped, too.

As I get closer, I can see a shadowy figure step out from underneath the canopy out front of the bar. Burly, hairy. Probably the bouncer. I can just barely make out a green-

Aw, crap.

I walk up to Reg buried in my coat and halfway through what's probably my fourth seagarette on this walk. He looks down at me with those burning eyes of his.

"Welcome to the Salty Spitoon. How tough are ya?"

I stare up into the man's eyes and all of a sudden my vision goes red and I want to take a baseball bat to his skull for what he did to that girl.

But I don't.

But I can't.

"Tough enough for you, Reg. Let me in."

 _To be continued._


	2. Chapter Two

The towering figure called Reg cracks his knuckles and grins at me with his big yellow teeth. The only thing keeping me from being intimidated by his stature is the long piece of metal I can feel tucked into the back pocket of my coat. I take one last puff of the smoke in my mouth before flicking it down to the concrete. It rests at the base of his right flipper, and he stomps it out before looking back up at my face. Keep your cool, you damn sponge. You're not going to make a scene here just because you feel lousy about a dame. This guy can be a real creep, and you're not quite ready to antagonize him. Not just yet.

"Heh. What dragged you up out of the gutters, you little yellow bastard?" Reg says with that smile still plastered on his ugly mug. "I'da thought you would be tryin' to get some shuteye, seein' as how that crustaceous creep keeps ya slavin' over that grill all day long."

"Can't sleep. Need something to drink."

"What, no beer at home to cool you off? If there's one thing I know about Spongebob Squarepants, it's that he don't get out much after hours."

"Maybe I just go places you aren't familiar with."

"Hah! Like where, squirt? The pizza parlor? No, wait, I think I got it… the gay bar on Wharf Street?"

"How about the kind of places where dirty business goes down that I don't want to tell and you don't want to hear about?"

That made him gulp. Good. He and I both know the type of work that Krabs has his claw in in this city, firsthand. Even a big brute like Reg can't handle some of it, and he has no idea what kinds of things I've done for Krabs to make my way in this town.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Squarepants."

"Yeah, Reg, _whatever I say_. Got it? Now get out of my way. I'm thirsty."

I step into the bar, and a wave of alcohol hits my nostrils. It would be nauseating if I hadn't built up a resistance to the stench long ago. Next is the music; the awful music. It hammers with relentless force at my eardrums until I'm forced to accept its thunder. I suppose I'm just more of a blues sponge myself.

The lights in this place glow orange, casting the translucent shadows of drunkards and criminals all over the greasy floorboards. The desperate and the greedy huddle around gambling tables in the corner like hobos around a trash fire, casting their cards into the ring of despair and hoping for money in return. Wooden booths stand in rows in the center of the room, and a variety of people occupy them, but they're really all the same: privy to this city's underground and willfully ignorant to its dreaded implications. They serve six kinds of beer here, none of them being that great, but they fill you up and they get you drunk and when it comes down to it that's what you drink beer for anyway. At the bar, three stools are held by fish too drunk to even lift their heads up off the table, and two are filled by joes who don't look like they got much of a future. One seat is open. I take it.

As I sit down on the cracked plush of the barstool, I hear a loud cry behind me. I whip around to see that somebody just took a bottle to the face. Now there's glass and blood everywhere and one guy's standing over an unconscious body, gleaming down on it with feral eyes and intentions to kill. He's a big scruffy whale with the dark shadow of a young beard strapped across his chin and thick red veins encircling his coal-black eyes that speak volumes about his current state of sobriety. The bottle he holds in his hand is shattered, and long vicious shards point outwards from the neck. Above the angry whale a light fixture shifts precariously with every vibration of this sickening music.

"You slimy goddamn snail! You think you can mess around with MY doll? How about tear open a new hole in ya with this here bottle and fuck ya with it? Huh? So you'll know exactly how it feels like to get FUCKED OVER!"

A small squeal escapes the body on the floor; it's not as unconscious as I thought. It wiggles and squirms in fear and tries to get some distance between itself and the massive whale, but it ends up just knocking down some tables and attracting more attention than it already had. The ramblers, the gamblers, the muscles, they're all looking down at this pathetic spectacle. Nobody's doing anything like I had hoped they would. Well, shit. No way am I getting involved, if that's what you're thinking, brain. No. It's the damn dame all over again; you see someone in trouble and you just gotta go in and save them like some knight in shining armor. So maybe it wasn't how Neptune damned gorgeous she was; maybe it was just instinct. A bad instinct at that. An instinct that'll get me killed one of these days.

I resist the urge because there's nothing useful I can do at this point anyway. Those two will settle their dispute one way or another and that'll be the end of it. There's a thousand disputes just like it every night in this town alone. Get it together, Spongebob; that girl's getting to you again. Do like you planned, and drink until you can sleep her off of you.

I turn to face the bartender. He's a round old guy with a nose that's just a bit too wide and two eyes that are just a bit too close together. "Sudweiser, please." He fills a mug with the frothy liquid right out of the tap and slides the brew down the bar to my waiting hand. I tremble at the touch of the drink; it's so cold, colder than the rain, colder than the door.

Colder than the freezer…

Damnit, shut the hell up! Shut the hell up! She was nothing to you! This obsession has gone far enough!

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. When I open them again, I'm still in this ratty old bar with this ice cold drink in front of me and this dead man behind me.

I take a long sip of the cool beer and let its icy contents slide down my throat and chill my insides.

 **Brrrr…**

 _I shiver in the corner. The freezing air's really starting to get to me. Was there really a reason why we had to do this whole thing in this place? Krabs has a thing for theatrics, I suppose, and everything up until now has just been exposition. Now it's time for the real show to begin._

 _Here I am, just standing here smoking this whole pack away, watching a girl getting beaten senseless for what amounts to no goddamn reason at all, at least in my book. I play the part of the silent guy, the one that don't say nothing and has to be all mysterious and shit. The one that takes your eyes off of the brute, the one pounding the life out of you, and lets you know that Krabs really means business. And sure enough, it's working. I've seen her look over in my direction more than once with those pleading eyes, asking silently for forgiveness for whatever thing she did that landed her in this position. Neptune save me, she's gorgeous even all swollen and bloody. A natural beauty. Shame that such a pretty face has to get pulped like that. But I don't say nothing. I never say nothing._

 _I just still can't believe how resilient she's been through this whole ordeal. It's been nearly half an hour now, and she still hasn't given Krabs what he wants; that is, the knowledge and satisfaction that she has been emotionally and spiritually defeated by him. He does it to all the victims that he takes personally, all the ones that have offended him directly in some way. He beats them senseless, and then he puts them in their place. They never stand a chance. The Navy definitely taught the crusty kike a few things about the art of reducing your prisoners to nothing._

 _And yet there she sits, a bloody mess, but nevertheless resolute. She still hasn't bent. What in Davy Jones is this girl made of? Neptune, just give the perverted old man what he wants. Scream. Sob. Do something that'll convince him that his work here is done, because for the love of Neptune I can't bear to watch this shit any longer._

 _"_ _You stole something near and dear to me, lass. Something ye can never repay. Do ye know how that makes this sad old crab feel? Do ye care? This can all be over soon, lassie, if ye're willin' it to be. Just say the word, ye have me word."_

 _"_ _Your word means nothing, you pile of shit. Burn in hell."_

 _Then something happens that I've never seen in all the years I've worked for this fat louse._ _Something changes in his posture, and his claws tense up. I lean forward to snatch a look at his face, and it's a sight I wish I hadn't discovered. His eyes burn with rage, and the edges of his lips curl downward in a fit of anger. This girl's really getting to the old man. Why?_

 _And then it hits me: he's never had to deal with someone so resilient, so intent on breaking his spirit of intimidation. He's frustrated. Most of all, he's nervous. He fears the girl's calm, and frankly so do I. The game he plays with his victims is one that she refuses to play. She won't roll the dice. Hell, she won't even pick up a single card._

 _Krabs reaches for the gun in his back pocket. Shit. My suspicions were correct. With a flick of his claw the hammer cocks back._

 **Clink.**

Two empty glass mugs collide on the bar. They were both mine. Maybe a third wouldn't do me too much wrong. Admittedly, my head seems to be getting lighter. The ache in my shoulders and feet is starting to disappear as well. All the stress I had over that dame fades into oblivion and I call to the bartender for another Sud.

One footstep touches down on the creaky floorboards behind me. Everybody's watching this damn whale.

Another footstep and a whimper. Damnit, I really don't want to witness some poor joe getting gutted. Not tonight.

I turn my head to watch. The whale lifts the broken bottle over his head. Those serrated edges glimmer, reflecting the dim light that shines on them from the bulb above them. He stands poised to strike down upon the defenseless man lying on the floor.

And everybody just watches.

That's it. That's far enough.

Before I even realize it, my hand's reaching for the knife in the back pocket of my coat. Neptune's dexterous fingers guide my aim upwards. More swiftly than I can think, the knife's out of my hand, hurtling across the room. It passes between two wooden supports and slices the rope that holds the metal light fixture clean in half. The whale looks up in surprise as the light comes crashing down on top of his head. He's unconscious in only a few moments, writhing in pain. That'll definitely leave a mark. The broken bottle hits the ground with a soft thud, and more shards of glass fly off its gleaming end.

The wretched fish on the ground takes the cue and dashes out the double doors as fast as his pathetic little legs can carry him. Something tells me he won't be messing around with some other fish's gal anytime soon.

In the meantime, the whole damn bar's staring at me, mouths agape. I don't much appreciate the attention.

"The fuck are you all looking at?"

And suddenly everything is as it was. The gamblers betting their lives away in the corner. The drunkards drinking themselves to death. The whole bar's alive with the energy of sinners who've come to this holy place as pilgrimage. It's all the same to them. Everything is. I down the third Sud and walk to the bathroom, my bladder full and thoughts of the bloody dame still spiraling in my head.

 _To be continued._


	3. Chapter Three

**Another chapter for you guys. Sorry, no flashback this time, but expect a longer one in the next chapter. I'm hoping I can really take this story in an interesting direction. Hope you enjoy!**

When the faucet finally spits out some water, I cup my hands beneath it and splash the cool liquid against my face. Then, my neck cranes upwards and I take a good long look at myself through the smudged mirror. The eyes that meet mine, the ones that stare back into themselves, they aren't as bright or blue as they were only a few years ago. The first stubs of a beard start to form around my lips, and dark creases shoot out like the forks of a river from the bridge of nose upwards in all directions, the subtle reminders of all the scowling I've been doing over the past few months.

The past few years, more like. If I can't even admit to myself that I'm no longer the same sponge that I was when I first started working for that slimy crustacean, how can I expect anybody else to understand? Not like it matters anyways. People change, and you can't expect to stay seventeen your whole life. Eventually, we all grow up; we all get our driver's license, we all meet that girl of our dreams, and we all get our hearts broken and sit on the doorstep and wonder what we did wrong. And we all fall in with the wrong crowd at some point. It's just that some have a better chance to get out than others. This pale yellow face is a reminder of that. A reminder that even if I had wanted things to turn out a different way, I never really had a choice in the first place. I always would have gotten that job at the Krusty Krab. I always would have watched in horror as I witnessed my first murder. I always would have prowled the streets shoulder to shoulder with people I despise. I always would have stared death in the face at gunpoint that one foggy night and have been saved by a damned misfire. And I would have always ended up right here, in this spot, on this night, looking at this reflection. So maybe I do have a purpose in this ocean after all. Maybe Neptune's looking out for me in some way, keeping my spongy ass alive every day to fulfill some grander purpose. Or maybe that's just what I tell myself every morning to justify my rotten existence. Either way, it all comes down to me not having any choice at all.

And yet every decision I make has consequences. Real consequences. My life isn't dictated by other men, it isn't dictated by past events, and it certainly isn't dictated by Neptune. No, this life is mine. To argue the nature of free will with myself would be absurd, because when it comes down to it, it doesn't really matter at all whether or not the decisions we make are simulated. It makes no difference if everybody or nobody has control over their own life, because in the end we keep on making things happen, as a society. From this wretched hellhole of a city to the farthest reaches of the ocean, fishfolk have to survive. That's all it is, really. Survival of the fittest. Is free will an illusion? Maybe. Or maybe not. I don't give a fuck either way.

My hands grip tighter onto the sink, and I pull my bloodshot eyes away from the mirror. Krabs hasn't broken me. Neither has the world. I'm not the same chipper sea sponge I once was, that's true, but I'll be damned if this isn't the prime of my life. I light another smoke, and the warmth of its fumes inside of me fills my whole body with pleasure. Another puff and it's done. I drop it in the trash can and drag my drunken ass out of the filthy lavatory the same way it came in.

I walk right past all the gambling tables and the barstools right up to the bartender. I thank him and give him what I owe. I step over the lightly breathing body of the whale sprawled across the floor to retrieve the knife sticking out of the wall. And then I leave. I hate bars. They don't sit quite right with me.

As I walk out of the door and take my first few steps onto the wet pavement, I look around and admire my surroundings. Bikini Bottom. When you're not looking down at your feet to make sure you don't step in any blood and you're not looking forward to make sure there's no mugger waiting around a corner with a switchblade and you're not looking back to make sure nobody's tailing you on your way home, you get to look up, and it really is a sight to behold. The neon floods the lowest levels of the streets and fills them with the kind of cold, empty light only they deserve. But above that, the only lights are the lamps in the apartment windows and the stars in the sky. She's a city in every sense of the term, and despite everything she's put me through I still love her all the same. She wraps her warm embrace around my shoulders, and I kill the parasites that swarm in her streets and infest her alleys. We are a symbiote. I am part of her. We are one.

Here you go again, Spongebob, getting all moody and self-righteous. It comes with being drunk, I guess. That girl deserved better, didn't she? I didn't know her, but I know that she could have gone somewhere, done something, if only Krabs wasn't such a money-loving coward. I swear to Neptune, I'll kill him. I really will. I know where he lives, I could sneak into his house in the dead of night and I could cut him open, just like he did to his boss before him. It'll be a legacy. Except I won't take his throne, no. I'll tell all of his goons and thugs that they gotta stop bullshitting themselves and to go out and to make a real living. And I could-

No.

No.

No.

My heart sinks like a ton of bricks. My legs keep carrying me forward, farther and farther away from that place, but am I really going anywhere? I stop and pull out another seag to smoke. Its light shines like wildfire in a world of darkness, a world where the neon only stretches its fingers as far as the intangible night allows. The smoke rises high into the sky and spreads thin across the vast expanse of stars above.

I check my wristwatch. It reads two o' clock. Only an hour has passed since I decided to take this little trip of mine, and yet it seems now like I've been out here all night. My legs and feet still ache, my neck is sore from all of the tossing and turning, and my eyes must be bloodshot as hell by now. Worst of all, I don't even feel drunk at all. That and I'm already almost out of smokes.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I get the worst idea I've had in a while. I figure, as long as I'm up and I'm out and about in town at night, that I might as well just keep on wandering and just see where my legs take me. My aching, sore feet, which are starting to numb up at this point anyways, trod flatly against the cold wet pavement and carry me further away from home, further into the steel jungle of Bikini Bottom.

But I soon realize that I'm only doing this to avoid thinking about what I was just thinking about; that is, somehow managing to bring down Krabs to avenge that dead girl. So now I suppose all that I can do is consider the facts. Krabs runs this town, and he can't be touched any more than Mars can. He's a greedy old bastard who will do whatever he can for money and power, up to and including murdering innocents without a second thought. He lives in Coral Estates, a wealthy suburb a few miles outside of downtown, where his posh anchor estate is guarded at night by a team of mercenaries. So attacking him there is out of the question. But it's now that I'm realizing that there must be some reason I want to go through with this so badly. Surely this damn girl can't be having this much of an effect on me? I would have had to have known her from somewhere before then; think, Spongebob, think. Or maybe she was just the catalyst to my absolute hatred of Krabs. Maybe she was a tipping point. A last straw. My legs carry me into a back alley, hidden from the watchful eyes of the stars. Yeah, that's it. She was defenseless, and he shot her down without a second thought, and all my years of working for the slimy crab came back to me and I realized how much he had to go. That's got to be it.

And then from nowhere, cold metal connects with the back of my head. The world blurs and crystallizes around me, and the wet pavement rushes up to punch me in the face. There is no sound or light. My head throbs with pain. Damnit. I made a mistake. I always make mistakes. Gradually sensation returns, and the world comes back into focus. I'm lying on my face in a back alley, and voices ring in my ears like broken bells.

"Yeah! You got 'im good, Donny! Take that, you little creep!"

"Maybe this'll teach ya some manners!"

"Yeah, don't go throwin' yer fancy knives at me, ya fucking cereal box!"

Another blow, this time to the spine. My whole body shudders from the pain, trying to plow downwards through the ground, away from the attacker, I suppose. My thoughts go hazy. I'm slipping into a tunnel of darkness, a black void which I'm unlikely to ever escape. I turn my head to the side to see two steel-toed boots firmly planted on the ground. A third leg accompanies them… no, it's a steel pipe, and it's got two bloody dents in it. Wonder where those came from…

…

No.

This isn't how I go. If I let myself black out now, they'll kill me here. Or worse. You've got to fight it Spongebob. Get up. Don't let yourself get beat. Don't let yourself… go… down.

My eyes close for half a second, then open again. Pain all over. Weakness. Futility. Don't let yourself… get… beat…

The last thing I hear before my consciousness fades is the sound of a gun firing, a bullet tearing through flesh, the scream of a whale.

A metal pipe falling to the pavement.

 _To be continued._


	4. Chapter Four

_"_ _Krabs, come on. She's not worth it."_

 _"_ _Shut yer fuckin' trap, me boy! This little vixen thinks she can lie ta me!?"_

 _"_ _She's not worth it. This isn't right."_

 _"_ _Oh, is that so, boyo? How about I throw ye in with the lot, then? Ye want ta disobey me orders, Mr. Squarepants? Is that the way you want yer pathetic existence ta end?"_

 _I step into the harsh light that covers the center of the freezer. My eyes are glued to Krab's face. His eyes glow orange with intense rage, his yellow teeth grind together with an animalistic ferocity. He's insane with anger. To think that one girl could bring a guy like Krabs to the brink of fury._

 _Slowly my eyes turn to stare at the woman tied to a wooden chair by her wrists. Her face is a bloody mess; one of her eyes is nearly swollen shut, her cheeks are red with blood buildup beneath the skin, and one of her teeth is cracked. She's got two broken ribs and brown bruises all over her body. She's been beaten something awful at the hands of Krab's foremost in the art of beating: Reg, a mean fish with a bad attitude. He stands behind the chair, grinning that smug grin and cracking his knuckles over and over._

 _I look back at Krabs and he's already pulled the gun out of his back pocket. Its shining coat glimmers beneath the hard luminosity of the hanging lamp, all the colors of the spectrum concentrically twirling about the flare on every exquisite ridge. The ebony grip sparkles in its own right, protruding from each side of the handle with special curves to accommodate the claws that Krabs possesses. I don't know much about guns, since I rarely use them, but the old man's told me enough about this one, that's for sure. It's a customized Drowning M1911, and a relic of one at that. He got it back in the war, where he killed eighteen sharks with it. How many shots did it take to kill all of those sharks? Eighteen._

 _And now he's pointing this gleaming stick of death in the face of the young dame sitting in the chair in front of me. This isn't right._

 _"_ _Would you mind telling me anyway what she did to you? I've been standing here by the door for an hour now and I don't even know why I'm here."_

 _"_ _Yer lucky I like havin' ya around, boyo. Or else ye'd be fish food in no time. Ye don't need to know why ye're here, only that this one here did me wrong, and I'm gonna blow 'er brains out fer it!"_

 _My hands curl into fists. My knuckles go white. Neptune, my head hurts. It feels like someone took a swing at me with a baseball bat._

 _This isn't right. I can't let him do this. She's just a girl. I've got to do something._

 _But I don't. I can't. My feet are glued to the floor. Krabs steadies his aim._

 _I raise my arm._

 _He looks the girl dead in the eye._

 _My fingers shoot forward._

 _She looks right back at him._

 _He pulls the trigger._

 **Bang.**

My eyes shoot open. I'm lying on my back in the middle of an alley, the rain tickling my face. What in the name of Davy Jones am I doing here? Then I realize how much my head is aching, and I remember. I was ambushed by those lousy creeps at the bar. Guess the whale didn't take too kindly to the thought of a little sponge taking him out with nothing but a throwing knife and a ceiling lamp. So why the hell am I still alive?

I sit up, wiping the rain off of my bloody face. When I do, the scene around me comes into focus. Lying around me in the alley, faces down into the pavement, are three dead bodies. One of them is the whale. Guess that answers that question. So who, pray tell, is the mystery gunman, my guardian angel? I bring one knee to the ground, and then another, and then start to stand up. Only one way to find o-

"Move another inch, and I'll blow your head off. Just like these three."

The barrel of a gun presses itself against the back of my pounding head. Damnit, I can barely even stand. My knees feel weak. This is the second time something like this has happened tonight. Hopefully this one will be a bit more reasonable than the three unfortunate souls lying at my feet right now.

"Turn around. Slowly."

Is that a woman's voice? I turn, and the rain picks up again. It patters against the brim of my hat, an endless discordant drumbeat. All around me the cacophony of raindrops on concrete fills my head with noise. I turn, and find myself face to face with a teal fish, taller than myself, dressed all in black. Black boots, black stockings, black corset, black coat.

Black eyeshadow.

Black lipstick.

And a stitched up gunshot wound in the side of her head.

Neptune damnit, I can't believe my eyes.

There she stands, a dead woman, alive as ever, her silhouette illuminated against the brick walls of this city corridor by the neon that decorates each and every building. Even with the stitching line etched along her cheek she's still as goddamn gorgeous as when she was first dragged into that freezer for me to see. She steps lightly around my shaking body, and from this angle I can see that the scar extends down to her left gills, zigzagging between the slits and making a mess of them. How the hell does she even breathe?

And with that in mind, how the hell is she alive? Krabs pulled the trigger right in front of me, I watched as his bullet pierced her head. How it splattered her brains all over the frozen boxes of patties, how it ripped a hole in her head the size of Texas, how it went right through her pretty little skull and out the other end. How the force of the blast sent her whole lifeless body tumbling backwards, how the wooden chair she was tied to buckled beneath the weight of her fall and snapped into splinters. And I watched, pale-faced and mad as hell but unable to do a goddamn thing because I owe that slimy crustacean everything, I watched as that mean bastard Reg untied her fins and picked her up and carried her out back and threw her into the dumpster behind the Krusty Krab. I watched. It happened. And yet here she is, in the flesh, alive as ever.

"You don't look so good, Spongebob. Care to smoke?" the dame looked me in the eye as she pulled a fresh pack from her jean pocket.

"How the hell do you know my name?"

"That's a funny question to ask, little sponge. Especially since I assumed the first question on your mind would be, 'I watched you die, how in the ocean are you standing before me now, alive?'"

"I was getting to that." I reach out my hand and take the pack from hers. I notice she's still got her gun trained on me. My lighter's still in my pocket. I bring it and a smoke up to my face, trying to shield them from the downpour with my coat, and light it up. I take a long puff, trying to make sense out of what's happened here, but then I figure I might as well get it all from the source. "Mind if we go someplace a bit dryer?"

"There's no place dry down here, Spongebob. Follow me."

She leads me out of the alley and down the street. I follow her, mesmerized, unable to keep my wits together, as she leads me for what must be ten blocks of sidewalk, right up to a brick apartment building. The ladder in the alley's down, and we climb up it onto the catwalk and we ascend the metal stairs right up to the fourth floor. Then we duck into the open window and shut it behind us. The rain taps against the window, but it's quieter in here. Quiet enough for the gears in my brain to start turning again.

"So why haven't you killed me yet?"

Her laughter rings in my ears. It's enchanting. It's infectious. It's a damn fine laugh.

"Don't you think if I wanted to kill you, I would have done that while your ass was sprawled across the pavement, right after I killed those three guys?"

"Well, in my experience," I say, lighting another seagarette and bringing it up to my lips, "the dames have a tendency for theatrics. You do the whole business with the dramatic introduction, the backstory, the angered accusation, and then you put one in my head."

"I guess I'm not like the dames you see in your picture shows, then."

"Guess so."

"Well, in response to your earlier question, I got your name from another one of Krabs' goons I interrogated in a strip club. He wasn't so eager to blab at first, but I encouraged him by breaking a few bones. I'm interested in you, Spongebob. You might be just the one I'm looking for."

"Thanks for the offer, but I'm not really looking for romance with dead women."

"You know that's not what I meant."

"Well then I'd love to know what you did mean. And while you're at it, why don't you answer a few more questions for me. Questions like, who the hell are you? Why are you alive? Why did Krabs try to kill you? And, most importantly, why am I sitting here with you right now, trying to decide whether or not to trust you?"

"Well, Spongebob, I suppose I ought to start from the beginning when I tell this story. Not 'the very beginning', mind you. That old cliché's long since had its flame wither and die. But you should at least know why we're here right now, and what I want you to do.

"My name is Isabelle. I grew up in the clam district with my mother, one of Krabs' whores. It was a hard and dangerous life, what with the kinds of people who came down there to get their relief, but we managed. She cared for me and loved me, and I loved her. That is, until she got on Boss Shell's wrong side. See, I'm sure you remember Boss Shell from back in the days when Krabs was a bit more small time and still working his way up the ladder here in the city. Well, one night, Shell's son Billy comes down to the clam looking for some fun. All the whores knew who he was, who his father was; all except for my mother. She refused him, told him he was only seventeen and she wouldn't do it with a kid. I was there when it happened. I was only six. He kept getting drunker and drunker and angrier and angrier and he kept coming onto her telling her that he would do bad things to her if she didn't let him have his way with her. But she still said no.

"So Billy tells his father about my mother, and the next night the boss sends some goons out to the clam. They found her on a corner selling herself and they piled out of the car and they beat her with baseball bats until she was lying on the pavement begging them to stop. Then they raped her. Then they killed her.

"The rest of the whores took me in and raised me. After they told me what had happened, I spent the next five years thinking about all the awful things I'd do to Boss Shell if I ever met him. That is, until they found him dead in his bed with his throat slashed open and a bloody pair of crab leg crackers on the nightstand. As it turned out, killing my mother, one of his whores, was just one point on a long list of things that Boss Shell did to Krabs over the years that eventually set him over the edge. Krabs never claimed responsibility for the murder, but it's said that he did it personally.

"After that, I felt like I was indebted to Krabs. He offed my mother's killer, and although that meant I couldn't claim Shell for myself, my eleven year old mind loved Krabs for it. I went to him one day, told him my story. I even offered myself to him. He just laughed. He told me that my body wasn't meant to grow into that of a whore. He told me that I could be put to better use. I didn't like leaving the other girls, but the crab technically owned me and I was grateful to him anyways.

"So from the age of eleven to the age of eighteen, I was trained to be a weapon. Even from the first time he saw me, when I was just a little girl, Krabs saw me for what I could really be. And he was right. He molded me into an assassin, one that could slip into your window in the middle of the night without a sound, kill you without a blade or a gun, and then leave without a trace. I was a shadow. Krabs' shadow. And he paid me. A lot. But I was never happy."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because when Krabs found out that I was planning to steal one million dollars from him and then leave town for a better life, he wasn't too happy."

"So he killed you."

"I thought that we had something special. He always treated me so kindly, like a grandfather. He was a better caretaker than my mother had ever been, especially when I had always imagined him as some big bad woman-exploiting monster. But then I found out that I was just another lackey to him. Just another member of his posse. And when I sat in that freezer, my hands tied behind my back, getting the shit beaten out of me by that Reg fellow, every single bloody blow drilled the realization of my utter worthlessness deeper and deeper into my skull.

"Then you stepped into the light. You tried to look hardened, Spongebob, rugged and dangerous, but I had no doubt that I saw the tiniest twinkle of sympathy in your eyes. You wanted Krabs to stop, to let me go. I didn't know why at the time, but I think I do now, and I think you do too."

"Enlighten me."

"You saw in me a reflection of yourself, Spongebob. You saw someone like you, someone who clearly despised Krabs with all their heart, getting the life beat out of them because of it. You realized that if you ever acted against Krabs, that you would get the same treatment. You saw, whether you realized it or not, that I was special to Krabs in my own mind, just like you are in yours. And it frightened you. You didn't want that to happen. To see yourself die."

I listen close, letting my ears grip onto every word from her mouth and seize their honeyed din. She's right, I realize. She's beautiful, yes, but that's not the reason I didn't want to see her bite the dust in the end, and why I felt so Neptune damned awful after the fact. No, it was because me and her, we're the same. The assassin and the cook.

"That still doesn't explain how the hell you survived a bullet point blank to the skull."

"I don't know how, Spongebob. One moment Krabs was firing a round straight at my head, the next I was gasping for oxygen on a table in a dingy apartment. It turns out that after Reg threw my body into the dumpster, someone found me and brought me to the nearest doctor, who happened to be underground and unlicensed. He fixed me up, and he was kind and all, but not quite the medical expertise you'd expect from a real hospital. The bullet entered here," she gestures to a spot below her left cheekbone, "and actually missed my brain entirely. Of course, I still would have bled out had the doc not stitched me up; the bullet banged around in my jaw and neck and practically tore my face in half. My left gills hardly even work anymore."

"Alright, well, that's three questions answered. But one more still remains, sweetheart. Why come to me, after all this?"

She stands up, the neon from outside shines on her face through the window, and for the life of me I can swear that for a moment I saw an angel take her place in this darkened apartment, halo and all.

"We're a lot alike, you and I. So I came to you in the hopes that you could help me do something, Spongebob.

"And what would that be, Isabelle?"

"Isn't it obvious? We kill Eugene Krabs."

 _To be continued._


End file.
